Spent some time talking about the infamous side project to end all side projects. It took a while to hit on some of the stuff Catherine was getting at, but the result was a light bulb lighting for me -- regarding both my own feelings about the project and its meaning in my life, and some of the developments for key characters in the graphic novel. Jason and I spring-boarded off of that, and the results are encouraging. Some key scenes have tightened up, the dramatic arc for the first year feels a lot more compelling, and Caleb Reis, the main character, popped into three dimensions after a long life as a 'generic archetypical cool guy.' We're going over things with a fine-tooth comb now, writing dialogue for scenes, tweaking the details and so on.

One of the winners of the 2000 Interactive Fiction Contest is now online for convenient web exploration. "Galatea" is a weird-but-cool talking statue, capable of conversing and interacting in text. Use the standard 'look, say, etc' commands to tinker with it.

Salon magazine has an interesting interview with Rochus Misch, the last survivor of Hitler's ill-fated bunker in 1945. As Hitler's bodyguard, Misch had up-close-and-personal access to der fuhrer for years. It's unsettling but fascinating. At one point, he complains that there are no memorials for the dead children of Goebbels...

Salon: The murder of the children was terrible, but for every one of them, 1 million Jews were killed with less reason, to say nothing of the many, many others who died at the hands of the Nazis.

Mesch: That may be. But I ask you, if Hitler really did all the terrible things people now say he did, how could he have been our Fuhrer? How is it possible?

In other news, author and blogger Cory Doctorow continues to release his work to the public for free download almost as soon as it's published. A collection of his short stories is online, too. I'm fascinated by his willingness to release his books under the Creative Commons license, and he argues persuasively that open intellectual property doesn't harm creative works. I'm intrigued, but I must confess that it's scary to contemplate as Jason and I work on the graphic novel. We've put a lot of work into it. How will we approach those thorny issues?